Hence, in the ratio in which the pure intelligence is unfolded, and feelings of obligation arise, or conscience is developed, and becomes the practical rule of action, the individual _acquires_ the right of self-control, and only in that ratio. This right may ultimately reach to all things in themselves good--the civil government always holding the authority to punish departures from duty, and thereby always abridging men of the moral power to do wrong, (because it never could be their right to do wrong,) and always fortifying them in the right exercise of liberty of will, by furnishing motives, addressed to their intelligence and passions, to observe the right and to avoid the wrong in the exercise of the volitive power. Therefore, the _natural right of man_ is the right to such absolute control by others, in the earlier periods of his life, as that his will may retain its self-acting power unimpaired, as his mind is naturally unfolded by time and circumstances; and to such modification of this absolute control in after life, as may afford him due restraint under temptation to do wrong, and proper encouragement, at all times, to do right. Second. _The right of man in a state of maturity._ 1. The government should accord him all his natural rights, and protect him in the exercise of the same. That is, the political government should coöperate with the Divine to preserve his will in its normal condition as a self-acting power, and to guarantee to him the exercise of this power of self-action in all things good. The man who is protected in the enjoyment of this inherent liberty of will, is a free man in the strictest sense of the word. The government over him may be concentrated in the hands of one man, or it may be divided among an aristocracy, more or less numerous, or it may be what is called a democracy, but this does not of itself affect the fact of his freedom. If the government secure him in the enjoyment of these rights, and of all which necessarily attaches to them, he is essentially free. The kind of government, as a hereditary monarchy, or a democratic republic, does not, of itself, determine the actual freedom of its subjects. History furnishes many examples of government in which the power of control was concentrated in the hands of but one, or of a few individuals, which afforded its subjects the highest amount of essential liberty. To this day, “_the freedom of the British Constitution_”--as much as we justly prefer our own--is by no means an idle boast. It is a great mistake to suppose that a government which deposits the sovereignty among the great mass of the people, is the only free government. We are constrained to acknowledge that it is better to be oppressed by _one_, or by a few tyrants, than by a multitude of tyrants. It is not _this_ or _that kind_ of government that makes the subject essentially free. But it is the fact that the controlling power, whether wielded by one or by many, secures